Four traveler profiles (and how to sell direct to them)
Voice reading · ~1 min
The D-Edge study covered by Hosteltur spells out what many hoteliers suspected: the customer is not a monolith. The report identifies four profiles, the pragmatic impatient, the cautious planner, the aesthete, and the optimizer, each with their own logic when hitting the book button.
The picture is telling. 72% of travelers start their search on an OTAOTAAn online travel agency is a channel that sells accommodation and travel online in exchange for a commission. Booking.com and Expedia are the biggest. They bring volume and visibility, but charge commissions that eat... or Google Maps. On mobile, if the hotel's own website process takes more than 3 minutes, 60% abandon. Translation: your direct site competes with Booking on the same device, with even less patience.
Here's the kicker: a clear price difference on the direct site can triple conversions, and the acquisition cost savings are massive, 5 to 8 times less than paying 15%, 25% OTA commissionsCommissionCommission is the percentage a channel keeps for each booking it brings the hotel. It is the cost of selling through an OTA and usually runs from 15 to 25 percent, more in niche channels. Cutting dependence on high co.... Knowing who lands on your site lets you tweak the message, price, and flow so they don't leave. My take: it's not about expensive tech, it's about understanding who you're selling to.
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